


Confessional

by ARogueGambit7



Category: The Musketeers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 18:03:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15824118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARogueGambit7/pseuds/ARogueGambit7
Summary: Their love could never be holy





	Confessional

**Confessional**  

 

He finds her in the small chapel behind the genteel manor she now calls home. It is at the end of day, the only time he could sneak away from his brothers. He suspects they have been working to keep him occupied ever since he came here and discovered what she is about to do. The candles are dim lighting as the sun sets, draping the Romanesque building in vivid colors. This place, at least, was spared the excesses of Protestantism. It is one of the few places in England Athos has not decided is hideously ugly. But then, perhaps that is due to the woman in the red dress, who faces its altar.

She is alone, finally. He has not be alone with her ever since he arrived. Ever since he discovered her ready to marry an Englishman, ever since he entangled her in the plans of the Musketeers, he has been trying to meet her eyes. He walks towards her now, knowing he should say something about helping France. He should appeal to her sense of adventure, perhaps. Should say something about how dull she will find life here. Or even about how she cannot trust that this man will stand by her should he discover her secrets. Or even something about how he has missed her with a pain that wine couldn’t dull ever since the moment she left. Should say anything really.

But when he draws near her he is silent. He knows she knows he is there. Yet for a time they are quiet with each other, in this consecrated space. She breaks it, of course. She is always the one to speak.

“So it is war with Spain. And you want the help of the English. I don’t suppose I can be of service.”

“You have . . . made connections,” Athos manages to say. Barely. “You could assist us by—”

“Putting in a good word with my soon-to-be husband?” She asks it lightly, but he can hear the edge. She is baiting him, even now. Seeing if he will rise.

Athos wants to respond as his duty would demand — with an affirmative. Yes, put in a good word with your husband. Yes, help us for the sake of France. Yes, use your connections coolly, for the sake of others. But his mouth does not obey.

“So now you will add bigamy to the list of your sins?” The question is said coldly, but bitterness is evident in every word. Athos winces. This is why he cannot afford to give reign to his tongue when around her. Like a traitor, it never obeys his head, but always, always colludes with his heart.

Anne — she is only ever Anne to him, whatever name she may give herself here — chuckles bitterly in the back of her throat as she faces the altar, refusing still to look at him. “So we are back to that now? My sins? I am condemned always in your eyes then?  But of course. Of course I am. I should have known you couldn’t look past it. I should have known . . .”

Athos is breathing fast now, and his hands move against his will into his pocket, where it is kept. No. Now his hands are part of the treasonous conspiracy too.  “I . . . I could . . . I . . . Anne—”

“You could never—” Anne turns, her face cold and proud, the tightness present again. Until her eyes fall on the glove in his hand. Then her eyes widen in terrible fear. “No.” She backs away, almost stumbling. “No, no . . .”

Athos is holding it tightly, and he moves towards her inexorably. Despite the images of saints looking down on them from every window, he finds he has no mercy. “What? Are you surprised? Did you not leave it for me to find? A token to drive me mad? Wouldn’t you be glad to know if you succeeded?”

Anne is shaking her head in desperate denial. “No. I won’t—” She whirls around and tries to flee. But Athos is too swift for her this time. He catches her arm and forces her against him, to face him. “Anne—”

“You came too late,” she accuses him quickly, her answer too ready. Athos sees it for what it is.

“You left too early.”

“You would never have gone with me.” Her voice cannot maintain harshness now, just as he is holding her fast, denying her distance.

“No,” he acknowledges, and sees how it is not a revelation to her. How it still breaks her, nevertheless. “You could have stayed.”

“And what? You would have hated my work as a spy. You would not have lived with me as your wife. What? Did you want to see me ply my only other skill in some dank Paris brothel, on my knees for some new member of your regiment every week, Captain?” she throws at him, cruelly, anxiously, helplessly. He responds by grabbing her other shoulder roughly, angling her up to face him. He has no answer, as she knew he would have no answer. The heady scent of the censers makes her perfume more powerful than it should be. Like witchcraft. Like the devil’s work inside this holy place.

“You cannot go through with this farce,” he orders of her, as if he could make her obey. His eyes are overbright, more blue than the stained glass of the Virgin’s veil, too honest, too wild.

“Why not?” she dares him, her dark hair spilling from its elegant twist, her words a hiss against the skin of his neck, his chin. “He will have me. I will have him.”

“You will have a second husband? An Englishman? You will betray your country as well as God?” Athos rails, his deep baritone losing composure with every word, ringing them through the stone walls.

“Do you think I will be whispering state secrets to him in bed?” Anne goads, her vicious smile gaining strength as his hands squeeze her. “I assure you, we will be far too busy with other activities.”

“You are without shame,” Athos declares, meaning to demean her, to insult her, never meaning for it to come out this husky combination of fury and need.

“Yes,” she confesses without remorse, with abandon. “You have stripped me of it.”

This, this is what it feels to be mad, Athos knows now. It is to be pulling her in closer, to feel her tense but not struggle. “Do you love him?” Oh God, he would that he should have said anything else. He can tell that she is surprised, surprised even now that he has lost himself far enough to speak it.

“I opened my heart once,” she said, in a voice pitched low with rusty honesty. “And you have spent the last seven years making me regret it. Do you think I would ever allow myself to become so weak again?”

Athos stares at her, stares because he has no answer. He can see the pain and the triumph on her face, he knows he cannot best her like this. So he walks forward, forcing her to walk backwards until she hits the seats of the pew. His gloved right hand goes into her hair, pulling her head back, pulling her taut. He can see the rush of fear, shock, and desire fall over her face, the red lust line moving up her porcelain neck.

“You cannot do this,” he repeats, his voice a whisper against her lips. “I will not allow it.”

“You cannot stop me,” she says, though a thrill is going through her body at him so wild, so at the beck and call of desires he has always until now succeeded in turning from. “You have no right.”

“I have every right,” he swears, and his left hand isn’t on her arm anymore, it’s on her back. “I have the only right.”

He kisses her. He kisses her hard, and he kisses her with demands. But he does not kiss her into submission. He knows that he is giving himself up to her. As does she, because it is she who grabs his hair, she who pulls him down, down to the floor of the aisle.

It has been years. That is the only coherent thought Athos has when he feels her under him, flush against him, warm to his heat. He alone of his friends has scorned the touch of women; too racked with guilt, with hate, with burdens he would never place on some innocent female whose only crime would be to remind him of what he had lost. But God, he was still a human, still a man. And he had spent nights, countless nights, dreaming of this. When he had drunk enough to dull his conscience and his self-loathing, to pass into that madness drink could bring on, he had let himself remember. Had let himself go back to those heady days when he had never needed alcohol because there had been her.

“Athos.” She breaths against his lips when he pulls away for breath, and he waits for shame to stay his hand, as it always has before. But when he looks down at her their eyes lock. He can see that she is as terrified and lost as he, and he realizes that her words were true — no one will ever know him as she does, as he does her. There will never be another woman with whom he can share this. And, damn him, given the choice he would still choose her from all the women of the world.

“Damn,” he swears, and then he is kissing her again. She keens against his lips, her hands entangled in his hair. His tongue is plundering, hers wicked, and they answer each challenge the other gives. His hands, he cannot control them. They slide down her body, and she arches up, like an alley cat in fever. He hates her for it, for knowing he is not the only one to have known it, for knowing that he has only himself to blame for that fact. Her nails are at his back now, vicious and sharp. He would thank her for the pain, if his mouth were not so occupied with her throat, and then her cleavage. He moves beyond the reach of her hands, and he is rough when he pulls up her skirts. But he cannot be other than gentle when he moves down to her thighs, because he cannot forget what it meant to love her like this. And then her hands are back in his hair, curling and holding, and then she is begging and pleading, saying prayers this holy place was never meant to hear.

“Please. Please Athos. Please God. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t. No . . . no, yes, please. Damn you, yes. God . . .”

He wonders, briefly, with whatever part of him is not utterly driven with animal need, whether she believes in a God — whether she ever did. Perhaps that is the source of her lack of conscience, the ease with which she kills now. Perhaps she never had any reason to believe in His love for her. 

Or perhaps it is far worse. Perhaps he robbed her of that too, when he betrayed her. Perhaps he killed her faith that day at the tree.

He hates. He hates with a passion that profanes the sacred hall far worse, he is sure, than what he is currently doing. He takes that hate with him as he moves back up her body, and she gives it back to him when she bites his lip as he kisses her mouth. He can taste that she hates him too. Good. He has no right to be forgiven, especially when he cannot yet forgive her.

She is fierce against him now, her fingers demanding as they free him. He knows he will not hurt her like this, knows that he cannot. She is grown too hard for that, and she knows him too well. So he is fierce too, as he pulls up her skirts. He is cruel as she is cruel, finally admitting to it. Once, when they made love in sunlight and under the sanctity of a blessed union, he had freed her to be good. Now, in the darkened church, made perverse by their joining, she forces him to be wrong.

Her arms wrap around his neck when he enters her, and she chokes back a scream. He realizes dimly that she is still trying to keep quiet, to keep this thing secret. And it infuriates him.

“Don’t,” he warns, and he kisses her deeply. “Don’t . . . lie.” He moves to her neck and his lips brush against the scars. She whimpers, and uses her body to punish him, as he is punishing her. For faithlessness — nothing more. Here and now, he doesn’t pretend to care about her sins, her murders. He can take those crimes on his head and own them, prefers to do so. But he cannot silence the aching fury and fear that she is faithless in more than her body. And so he is rough as she is wild, he is hard as she is burning, and they both swear and bite and cut. It is lovemaking as a battle, an embodiment of this twisted, angry, hateful, desperate mess they have made of each other.

They could be found. Anyone could walk in. Athos had railed at his friend for condemning him by giving in to passion within the walls of a convent. What would pious Aramis say to his staid captain desecrating the halls of a church? In the very aisle, in front of the altar, before the very sight of God?

What God? The thought rides the wave of pleasure-pain that comes with Anne’s teeth on his neck, her legs tight around his hips. What should he care for a God that did not give him the sight to see truth when it mattered? What should he care for a God that might yet consign his love to hell for murders that bear always his seal? What respect must he show a deity that would rip them apart? 

Because He must — for there is no way that their love can be holy. It cannot be holy for him to not care about the weight of her dead. It cannot be holy for him to kiss lips that have known so many others, that have spoken so many lies, and feel this unrepentant, dark, all-consuming passion. It cannot be holy to have her hands, hands that have taken lives, be the ones that curl in his hair and pull, needing, and make him lose his pace and drive into her wildly, until her whimpers are rhythmic and begging, and his moans are of her name. It cannot be holy for him admit, now, as she is crying out into his shoulder, her body pulsing with release, that he would love her even if she killed again. It cannot be holy, when his head falls into the crook of her neck, for him to surrender to her again, knowing he would turn his back on God and country to keep her. On the floor of this church, he lies with his enemy and his lover, and knows that if he is called to account, this time, he will choose his wife.

 


End file.
